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Sophie found him in the spare room staring at the wall.
One hand was propped on his hip, the other rubbed at his chin as it always did when he was deep in thought. His lower lip worked between his teeth as he ran a distracted hand through his hair.
It was the same expression he wore when he was painting—intense, focused, slightly tortured.
Which, Sophie thought, seemed a bit dramatic considering the subject was drywall.
“Benedict,” Sophie said gently.
He didn’t respond.
Sophie followed his gaze to the three paint swatches taped to the wall.
A soft mint color. Pale green. Gray.
“How long have you been in here?”
“Forty minutes,” Benedict answered, his eyes still focusing on the wall like it was asking him a philosophical question.
In Greek.
“Looking at paint?”
“Evaluating paint.”
Sophie stepped closer, squinting at the wall, one hand absently rubbing the spot just below her ribs where their child had very stubbornly insisted on lodging a foot.
“It needs to be the right shade,” he mumbled.
“They all look the same to me,” she said.
Benedict immediately straightened.
Sophie heard the slow exhale through his nose as he turned toward her.
“What.”
It was not so much a question.
“The colors,” Sophie repeated, nodding toward the wall. “They all look the same.”
“Sophie,” he said carefully, already pulling his phone from his back pocket. “How long have you known?”
Sophie froze.
For one brief, horrifying moment she wondered if she had given it away or if the doctor had called him.
She forced herself to swallow. “Known what?”
Benedict stared at her for a long moment, as though the answer should already be obvious.
“That you might be colorblind.”
Sophie blinked. “I’m…I’m sorry?”
But Benedict was already moving.
He unlocked his phone with the speed of a man confronting a medical emergency and began tapping furiously.
“This would explain so much,” he murmured.
“Such as?” Sophie replied, trying and failing not to take offense.
“Your complete inability to distinguish between three clearly different paint colors for starters.”
Sophie turned slowly back to the wall.
Soft mint.
Pale green.
Something that was, as far as Sophie could tell, simply gray.
“Benedict,” she said patiently, “I can tell that they are three different—”
“What number do you see?” He cut her off, his phone so close that her eyes couldn’t focus.
“I can’t see anything,” she mumbled.
“Nothing?” His voice rose an octave.
“Obviously not,” she huffed, swatting the phone from her face. “I was trying to say that I can’t see anything when you hold it that close to my eyes. And, I am not colorblind.”
Benedict gestured toward the paint. “You just said they all look the same.”
“Because they do.”
“Sophie, that one is eucalyptus.” He pointed to the wall.
“That one is a sort of sage.” He pointed again.
“And that one is—” he squinted at the final swatch. “—sort of a gray-lavender hybrid situation.”
Sophie folded her arms. “You just described two of the colors using the words sort of.”
Benedict ignored this entirely.
“This test is extremely reliable,” he said, turning the phone back toward her. “Most people can see the number immediately.”
Sophie leaned closer.
“Twelve,” she said with a sigh.
“Did you just guess or can you really see it?”
“I can really see it, Benedict! I am not colorblind!”
“Let’s try another just to be sure it wasn’t luck.”
Sophie gently pushed his phone down.
“Ben, I promise you I can see colors.”
“You said they all look the same,” he argued again.
“They are all extremely pale!”
“They are not that pale. They’re clearly different.”
Sophie rolled her eyes.
“The first option has cooler undertones, which is nice if we want to convey a calming environment. While the second is more representative of nature. And the third…I’m not really positive what the third conveys honestly, but the paint department said it was one of the most popular colors for a baby nursery, so I decided to try it. Although now I’m starting to question if we should just throw all these options out and start completely over.”
Sophie exhaled. “It might be easier if we just painted the room a soft pink and called it a day,” she said absentmindedly.
“Pink?” he repeated slowly.
Sophie immediately regretted everything.
Benedict did not move.
For several seconds he simply looked at her.
“Why would we paint the nursery pink, Sophie?”
Sophie closed her eyes and exhaled.
“The technician…slipped. During the last ultrasound. The one you missed because you had that terrible flu. She felt so awful about it. But I thought that if I could keep it a secret from you, you could still be surprised and—”
“So the pink…”
He stepped closer. His eyes searching hers.
“Is because…”
Sophie met his gaze.
“We’re having a daughter.”
For a moment Benedict didn’t move.
Sophie watched the words settle over him, watched the precise instant they truly registered. His eyes flicked away from hers, drifting almost absently toward the wall where the three paint swatches still clung stubbornly to the drywall.
Eucalyptus.
Soft sage.
Something that might have been lavender.
He blinked once.
Then again.
“A daughter,” he said quietly.
The words sounded unfamiliar on his tongue, as though he were testing their shape.
Sophie felt a small knot of nerves twist in her stomach. She had imagined this moment half a dozen different ways in the weeks since the ultrasound.
But in none of her imagined scenarios had she imagined stillness.
Thinking.
Processing.
His gaze shifted slowly back to her, softer now in a way that made her chest tighten.
“A daughter,” he repeated, a little more firmly this time.
And then, to Sophie’s mild astonishment, Benedict Bridgerton began to laugh.
Not loudly.
Not in the dramatic, theatrical sort of laughter he was prone to when something genuinely amused him.
This was softer.
Disbelieving, almost.
The kind of laugh that escaped when something wonderful caught a person completely off guard.
His hand moved almost unconsciously, settling over the place just below her ribs where their child had so recently been making her presence known.
“Our daughter,” he said again. “I’m going to be a father.”
“Well, that’s hardly news,” Sophie laughed. “We’ve known that for a while.”
“But a little girl, Sophie,” he said softly. “A father to a little girl.”
Sophie moved her hand over Ben’s. “A little girl,” she nodded.
“I hope that she is just like you,” Benedict said sincerely as he pulled her into his arms.
“Minus the colorblindness,” he added.
“Honestly, Benedict,” Sophie swatted at him. “I am not colorblind!”
“Shhh,” he whispered into her hair. “Let’s not ruin the moment.”
Months later, Sophie would pause outside the nursery door and listen.
Benedict sat in the rocking chair beneath the pale pink walls, their daughter tucked sleepily against his shoulder.
He rocked slowly, murmuring softly to her in the half-whisper parents seemed to learn without ever being taught.
“You know,” he was saying thoughtfully, “I used to worry quite a lot about getting the colors in this room right.”
Sophie leaned against the doorframe, smiling.
Benedict pressed a gentle kiss to the top of their daughter’s head. His thumb brushed absently over her impossibly small hand.
“Turns out,” he said softly, “you improved the whole palette.”